Silent Running director, FX pioneer and recent Bleeding Cool interviewee Douglas Trumbull is to receive the Gordon E. Sawyer Award at the Oscars this your for his “technological contributions” that ” have brought credit to the industry.” [PR]

Dan Harris, co-writer of the second X-Men movie and Superman Returns, is to write a draft of Hovercar for Disney. It’s a futuristic young adult story with a lead called “Jason Chaser,” adapted from the novel Hover Car Racer. [THR]

William Joyce’s tremendous short toon The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore has been profiled. Read the piece, sure, but do check out the film too. It’s really great.And there’s a fascinating nugget at the bottom of the story – the same filmmakers are working on a short, children’s animation called The Numberlies, based on Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. It also sounds like they’re planning it in a “vertical” aspect ratio – ie. one that is taller than wide. I sense iPad inspiration here. [Animation]

The silent-ish film The Artist uses a portion of Bernard Hermann’s score from Vertigo. Kim Novak is rather unhappy about this, to say the least:

“I want to report a rape,” said Kim Novak, the legendary star of Vertigo, Picnic, and many other revered classics. “My body of work has been violated by The Artist. This film took the Love Theme music from Vertigo and used the emotions it engenders as its own. Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart can’t speak for themselves, but I can. It was our work that unconsciously or consciously evoked the memories and feelings to the audience that were used for the climax of The Artist. [Deadline]

This silly complaint has, of course, led to much discussion and a nascent meme. Here, for example, is the training sequence from Rocky set to that score:

Here’s a breakdown of the costs and revenues of Star Wars, laying bare its budget and profit, albeit before the peak merchandising rush. [FilmDetail]

And, not changing the subject at all really, Rick McCallum has revealed a few more bits about that Star Wars TV show we’ll never live to see, and one that’s coming up fast:

Over 50 scripts have been penned “by writers hailing from Europe, Australia, and North America”… When I asked McCallum if the show is still three or four years off, he said, “Even longer. Because I think we don’t have the technology yet to be able to do it”…

Closer on the horizon is Seth Green’s Star Wars comedy series. “That’s coming along great,” McCallum says. “I’ve seen a few of their little skits. They’re great.”

The fact that McCallum calls them “skits” suggests that the series will indeed follow the sketch-comedy format of the Robot Chicken: Star Wars episodes. McCallum suggests that Green’s series won’t be ready in time for a fall debut, but it may very well get a 2013 airdate.
[EW]

Maybe the new Egypt isn’t yet as free and open minded as we hoped. The country’s richest man, telecoms mogul Naguib Sawiris, is to stand trial for blasphemy after posting the following image to Twiter. [IMDB]

Ariel Pink is to produce, star in and write songs for a 60s set music-scene werewolf film, Bad vibes. Dave Gebroe is writing the screenplay and will direct. Pink promises that it will revolve around:

A band called the Sunrise Majesty, which is a mixture of Sly and the Family Stone and Jefferson Airplane. There’s already a whole backstory and mythology around them that’s pretty elaborate. [Pitchfork]

Rosie O’Donnell is not a fan of Melancholia nor, it would seem, Woody Allen:

If I had the choice between giving birth to a flaming child on the floor of an igloo, or watching that film again, I would choose the birth of my child… I’m happy to hear that Lars von Trier is not here today. He’s from Denmark. Fuck it, I don’t know where that country is, I’ll never look for him, or Woody Allen. Pedophile? Who’s to say? [Indiewire]

Here are two posters for Les Infideles, the next film that Jean Dujardin, Oscar-tempting star of The Artist, will see released in his native France. There are four in total but, really, the other two are essentially the same idea repeated two more times. [Ecran Large]

Jaimie Alexander plays Sif in the Marvel Universe films (well, film, singular to date). Asked about appearing in The Avengers or Thor 2, she didn’t seem entirely sure of all of the details:

I’m a comic book nerd at heart so I’d like to see the relationship between Thor and Sif progress… whether or not they do that, not sure yet. I think that element will be in there, but I don’t know how much.

Comic book nerd at heart? Really? Okay, if she says so. Now, will she be in The Avengers?

Sometimes you never know. It’ll be funny – they’ll call you and they’ll do a post-credits scene and you go, ‘Oh, so everything I said in interviews is completely wrong.’ So you never know. [MTV]

The Broken Tower was written and directed by James Franco, and stars him as the poet Hart Crane. It’s available on VOD in the US right now. Here’s a rather simple trailer. [CB]

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